Bill Montana
Tristan’s lion took a sh*t on the gallery floor!
Dimensions Variable (11.75 x 17 as shown)
Wood
Edition of 10 (5 of which have been made currently)
Production dates December 31 2017 -January 1 2018 for the first 4 in the edition.

Pablo Picasso once said “good artists borrow, great artists steal” when one goes back through art history this statement does seem to show validity. One can go back just a few years and see a thousand drip paintings that actually look nothing like a Jackson Pollock. Or the tens of thousands of acrylic pour paintings that just do not hold muster. One can even look at the works of Alexander Calder and see numerous copies far too many to count.

This work is part of a series of combination works where I go back in art history and recreate works which are now in the public domain in a new way. In this body of work I try to maintain the original look and feel of the original work to a point although the media is always changed. In this case the work was originally on paper and now is made from Baltic Birch. Then I put a new spin on the work which is often a humorous one. Sometimes combining elements from several artist to create a new visual image.

In Tristan’s lion took a sh*t on the gallery floor! was created after an 1916 India ink drawing by Jean Hans Arp that later appeared in Tristan Tzara book ‘De Nos Oiseaux’ Published by Paris, Éditions Kra, 1929. The carp is modified from a often repeated form that Jean Hans Arp used several times in his works.

Number 1 in this series is in a collection of a artist friend how also runs a gallery promoting emerging artist from around the world.

Historical note about how this work came to be. I was listing to a Jerry Saltz talk on Youtube and when he said
“I have been to the mountain top and no one knows what the what fuck they’re doing.” the idea for these works suddenly popped in to my head so I began playing around with the construct as a medium and several works came about from that moment of a wonderful statement whih does seem to be true.

Price $350 contact for purchase.